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4526117
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Republican Fund-Raising Dinner, Richmond, VA, for Congressional Candidates William Whitehurst (2nd District), John Hanson (3rd), Weldon Tuck (5th), and Pete Giesen (7th), May 3, 1968
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4526117
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Republican Fund-Raising Dinner, Richmond, VA, for Congressional Candidates William Whitehurst (2nd District), John Hanson (3rd), Weldon Tuck (5th), and Pete Giesen (7th), May 3, 1968
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Gerald R. Ford Congressional Papers
Speeches
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Pueblo Incident, 1968
Vietnam War, 1961-1975
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4526117
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1968-05-31
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5
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1968
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1968-05-01
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5
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1968
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The original documents are located in Box D24, folder "Republican Fund-Raising Dinner,
Richmond, VA, for Congressional Candidates William Whitehurst (2nd District), John
Hanson (3rd), Weldon Tuck (5th), and Pete Giesen (7th), May 3, 1968" of the Ford
Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential
Library.
Copyright Notice
The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of
photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. The Council donated to the United
States of America his copyrights in all of his unpublished writings in National Archives collections.
Works prepared by U.S. Government employees as part of their official duties are in the public
domain. The copyrights to materials written by other individuals or organizations are presumed to
remain with them. If you think any of the information displayed in the PDF is subject to a valid
copyright claim, please contact the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Office Copy
CONGRESSMAN
NEWS
GERALD R. FORD
HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADER
RELEASE
FOR RELEASE AT 6:30 P.M. FRIDAY--
MAY 3, 1968
Excerpts from a Speech by House Republican Leader Gerald R. Ford, R-Mich., at a
Republican Fund-Raising Dinner at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 3, 1968, at the John
Marshall Hotel, Richmond, Va., for Congressional Candidates William Whitehurst
(2nd district), John Hansen (3rd), Weldon Tuck (5th), and Pete Giesen (7th).
As we move through this Presidential election year, every voter in America
should ask himself which political party it is which has spent this Nation into a
financial crisis without solving the people's problems.
Which party is it which has poured billions of dollars into the problems
of the cities only to have them erupt in riots snuffing out more than 100 lives
and costing hundreds of millions of dollars?
Which party is it which has pumped billions of dollars into a War on Poverty--
in which the opening gun was fired just before the 1964 election--only to have the
Poor march on Washington and demand more meaningful results.
Which party is it which has bogged this Nation down in a land war in
Vietnam, where more than 25,000 Americans have lost their lives and some $70 billion
of our wealth has been dissipated?
Which party is it which is about to impose an income tax increase on the
American people to offset its extravagant federal spending?
The Democratic Party not only has failed to solve America's problems, it
has created crushing new ones.
I ask every American to look at what has happened to America in the last
seven years.
We have become involved in a no-win war which two aspirants for the
Democratic Presidential nomination in 1968 would end by bringing the Communists
into a coalition government while the Southvietnamese Government arrests a former
Presidential candidate for making such a proposal.
The cost of living has raced upward by nearly 20 per cent and while it used
to be said that a fool and his money are soon parted now this happens to all of us.
The national crime rate has jumped 83 per cent while our population has
increased 11 per cent.
Europeans have lost confidence in the dollar and are draining this country
of its gold supply.
Our paper money has become exactly that--because the Democratic Party has
(more)
Digitized from Box D24 of The Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
-2-
removed the 25 per cent gold backing from our currency.
For more than three months a fourth-rate Communist power has held a United
States intelligence ship and 82 crewmen captive after attacking the vessel with
impunity and killing one of the crew.
Perhaps Republicans should begin their 1968 campaign by crying "Remember
the Pueblo." No politics this--but a deep inner fury over the humiliation visited
upon the United States by North Korea and a VOW that an incident of this kind will
never happen again.
There is no question in my mind that it was a lack of preparedness by the
Johnson-Humphrey Administration to deal with an incident like the Pueblo affair
that resulted in the capture of the ship and the crew.
This is all part of the record of the Democratic Administrations and the
Democratic-controlled Congresses which have guided this country's fortunes and
misfortunes since January 1961 the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs, the costly stalemate
in Vietnam, the shame of the Pueblo, the deterioration of a North Atlantic Treaty
Organization which has been kicked out of France and forced to take refuge in
Belgium, the U.S. non-policy in the Mideast which failed to prevent the lightning
war of June 1967 and now hinders face-to-face peace negotiations between the
Israelis and the Arabs while Soviet influence in the Middle East grows, the continu-
ing failure of the Alliance for Progress, the waste and corruption in the foreign
aid program, the threat that the Soviet Union is overtaking us in nuclear capability
if she has not already passed US.
The only answer two of the Democratic presidential hopefuls have for all of
these foreign policy failures is to urge we give the Viet Cong's National Liberation
Front a share of the government in South Vietnam. The answer of the third
candidate--the man who earlier said a coalition government in South Vietnam would
be like putting a fox in with the chickens--is that he would accept a coalition
government if the South Vietnamese would accept it.
This is the kind of bankrupt government that the Democratic Party would like
to sell the American people for another four years--a party that has already
plunged the Nation into bankruptcy in foreign affairs and near-bankruptcy in its
financial affairs.
The American people are coming to realize that the Democratic Party has
mismanaged our foreign affairs and our domestic affairs and brought this Nation
to the brink of ruin. I am confident they will turn to the Republican Party in
November.
# # #
EXCERPTS
RICHMOND, VA.
MAY 3, 1968
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, U.S.
OFFICE OF THE MINORITY LEADER
Herald R. 3rd
PUBLIC DOCUMENT
M.C.
OFFICIAL BUSINESS
[Empty when arrived]
FRIDAY
7:30 P.M.
GOP FUND-RAISING DINNER
FOR CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATES
WHITEHURST
HANSEN
BERALD R.FORD GRAND
TUCK
GIESEN
JOHN MARSHALL HOTEL